Fiction is in danger of becoming a kind of poetry. Only other poets read it. Only other fiction writers care about it.

Try to develop actual work habits, and even though you have a busy life, try to reserve an hour, say - or more - a day to write. Some very good things have been written on an hour a day.

I still believe in the American Dream. I see it in terms of freedom, and a government that trusts its people to exercise freedom, that this is not a government that allows you to give, that allows you to explore, and doesn't dampen your own creativity - in the broadest sense - with a lot of dictums or dogmas or restraints. So, insofar as we can remain a free country that allows for the interplay of personal energies. I think this is still a country that is not only working towards a dream, but actually is the dream in action.

We do survive every moment, after all, except the last one.

There's a crystallization that goes on in a poem which the young man can bring off, but which the middle-aged man can't.

School is where you go between when your parents can't take you and industry can't take you.

The artist brings something into the world that didn't exist before, and he does it without destroying something else.